On the nights when Joan fell asleep with Vanessa in her bed, she was grateful for that charge. But on the nights when Joan fell asleep alone, feeling the soft sheets against the skin of her legs, grazing her own fingertips across her own belly, she was so grateful that she now possessed it. That it had possessed her.

From the outside, her life looked the same. She kept her dates with Frances. Neither she nor Vanessa were ever late to work, despite how tempted they were to stay in bed.

Joan said nothing to Barbara, nothing to her parents. When she hung out with Donna and Griff, she rarely mentioned Vanessa. When they were all at the Outpost together, Joan and Vanessa always sat at least one person away from each other. When they ran into each other at JSC, they acted like they always had: two friends, catching up.

To everyone else except the two of them, nothing had changed.

Except on those perfect nights when, after saying goodbye at the bar or Frenchie’s or driving home separately from a barbecue, there would be a soft, perilous knock on Joan’s door an hour later.

God, that sound. The knowledge that the part of Joan’s day that was in black and white had ended, and color was about to bleed in and flood her night.

Vanessa’s voice, so smooth, so low. “Hi.”

Joan’s after, smaller, excitable. “Hi.”

—

“Can I ask you something?” Joan said one night as she gave Vanessa a massage. Joan was in her underwear and bra, Vanessa wrapped up in Joan’s bedsheets.

It was so easy, to be this close to someone. Why had it ever seemed out of reach?

“You can ask me anything,” Vanessa said without looking back at her.

“Does your mother know?”

Joan could feel Vanessa’s shoulders tighten. She dug deeper into them.

“Does my mother know what?”

Joan knew there was no need to clarify.

“My mother is Catholic,” Vanessa said, finally. “So no, she does not.” Her flat tone made Joan think there was nothing more to say but then, after a moment, Vanessa spoke again: “I think she has her suspicions. But she will never ask me directly. In exchange, I never do anything to make it obvious.”

Joan could not conceive of telling her own parents; she certainly was not going to tell Barbara. Sometimes, Joan felt as if the words were in her throat, desperate to leap out of her mouth. But she held them back.

No matter how easy it was for Joan to lose herself in this new life, she was constantly aware of the cold, hard borders of it. The world would not care for her and Vanessa as they cared for each other.